REJECTIONS FOR MYSELF – GEORGE HOOK

This guy we knew who hung around the Café Noir coffeeshop here in Chicago, guy name of Max Perk, he was all about The New Yorker.

You know, talking it up in that fast Long Island New York voice of his we’ll never forget. Reading The New Yorker articles out loud to us. Carrying around copies from years ago along with his old books and magazines and paper stuff he hauled around in his The New Yorker canvas bag that had the face of their mascot on it: you know him, that high-class gent head with the pointed snoot and the top hat and the high collar and that one round eyeglass he’s looking through at a butterfly floating in the air.

Did Max Perk maybe have some of his own writing in the bag too? We never knew, because he didn’t show any to us, that’s for sure. Like, whenever he said he was a real writer and we asked about what he wrote, all he’d say was, he was saving his writing just for The New Yorker, end of story. See, he knew an editor or two there and they were working together on something that’d be right up there with Updike and Cheever and all those other The New Yorker guys. Just a matter of getting it as good as he could get it before those The New Yorker editors of his gave it their okay, and put it in the magazine, that’s all.

No slush pile like dirty snow in a Chicago alley for him, no sir. Straight to the top.

What all this means is that, because he was bound for The New Yorker, he knew what a real writer was about, namely, you were only really real if you made it into The New Yorker because, as the old song goes, if you make it in The New Yorker, you can make it anywhere. That happens, nobody was about to say you weren’t a real writer.

No way.

Not like those people who called themselves writers just out of the blue … like those people who were at the open mike every Friday night at the Café Noir. Nothing special, just reading their poems, their stories, maybe something from a screenplay. Meanwhile, while this was going on, our friend would be sitting at a back table fiddling around with the carrying strap on his The New Yorker bag and drinking down cup after cup of coffee: and, you know, we remember how he’d smack his lips like he had just found salt in that coffee when he didn’t like something he was hearing … and, man, Max Perk, did that a plenty. Time to time, he’d tell us what he thought of the pieces, like, too many “five-dollar words” for this one, “where’s the plot, where’s the yarn” for that one, “what are they trying to say,” for another one.

Thing was, he never missed one of those open mikes. Go figure.

Not that we’re saying Max Perk was a bad guy, or anything. Other than his The New Yorker moods, for the most part, he was friendly, outgoing … like, this Max Perk, he was the type of guy who gave people gifts, even if there was no holiday or anything. He worked for about twenty years at a used bookstore, like, he was always finding cheap books, records, paper stuff he’d give to you for free or just asking a couple bucks. And it goes without saying, you wanted a free The New Yorker, no problem at all, my friend: he not only had them all for the current year, he carried them around from years back too.

No, you can never say Max Perk didn’t love his books and magazines and paper stuff and he wanted you to have a piece of that love. Up until they broke his heart, that is.

See, what happened was, the bookstore where Max Perk worked closed after twenty years in business. And our friend, he took it sort of hard, which figures, because there he was, nearing his sixties, and for twenty of those years, he’s been making a living in his world of books and magazines and paper stuff. Now pretty much gone. Of course, we knew he still had his The New Yorker deal going on, so we figured, no problem, maybe now that he had free time, he could finish up that The New Yorker piece of his.

But wouldn’t you know it, a month later, Max Perk died quick. Blindsided by a heart attack. Course, you know this kind of thing happens all the time with these older guys who lose their full-time jobs after so many years. Sad, but there you have it.

Anyway, we were asked by his girlfriend if we could help clear up matters at his apartment a few days after his memorial service. But we found in there that not much needed clearing up. Because Max Perk, he had shelf after shelf of hardbacks in mint to near mint condition, paperbacks wrapped in plastic like the perfect housewife of the fifties did to their furniture, years of The New Yorker in perfect stacks … hell, he even kept notes of their dates in a leather notebook on his desk, my friend.

About that desk. See, Max Perk, he had this old, heavy metal typewriter sitting on it—like, when you look at it, you wonder, where do they even find the ribbons for them anymore? Now, on the right side of the typewriter, he had a stack of clean sheets of vintage stationery from, you guessed it, The New Yorker. That’s right: at the top of the sheets, the mascot, the high-class gent head, his pointed snoot, the top hat, the high collar, and that one round eyeglass he’s looking through at the butterfly floating in the air.

And want to know what we found on the left side of the typewriter? Same sheets of the old The New Yorker stationery, only typed up from his machine. Saying: “you must work on the character development still, though it is developing nicely” and “we are pleased with your current plot line, but it still lacks those certain details we discussed” and “while many of your sentences are nicely framed, we are looking for a greater nuance in the syntax,” and on and on. Signed off by some guy name of Ross T. Sterling, Associate Editor, dated in the eighties.

Then, when you turned those pages over, you found one page after another typed up with: “we are sorry, but your story does not fit the current needs of The New Yorker. Please feel free to resubmit in the future, as we remain convinced of your skill and talent.”

Same words, sheet after sheet, over and over and over again. Only no signature, no date.

The poor guy. You could write a book: Rejections for Myself. With excerpts in The New Yorker of his dreams.